Why the U.S. fears Europe W
William Pfaff, International Herald Tribune, February 11, 2003

Despite Secretary of State Colin Powell's brief appearance center-stage last Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was the Bush administration's star of the week, seeking the political destruction of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and regime change in Germany.
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This seems the real current priority of the Bush administration and its more ardent supporters in the press. Germany seems to Washington the vulnerable member of the resistance by "old Europe" to the Bush administration's Iraq policy. France is regarded as a hopeless case.
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President George W. Bush can hardly have been surprised that Schröder made opposition to an Iraq war part of his campaign platform in the parliamentary election last September: Bush, too, is a killer politician who knows a winning issue and how to use it. But he is shocked that Schröder has stuck with his promise to the electorate. The U.S. administration and its supporters believe that the precedent the chancellor set by running on an anti-American issue must not be allowed to stand. He must be humiliated as an example to others.[...]
- posted by ARYABHATT @ 8:21 pm